Deepest, Darkest in The Woods
by littlebirdy22
Summary: The woodlands in Forks have been crossed off from the townspeople for a reason. Strange tales have broken out, of a young man stepping into the woods, never to be found again. In the deepest, darkest part of the woods, there lurks a strange human-animal creature. When Bella stumbles across the bewildering creature, Edwar, it will change her life forever. Dark Edward.


** Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. I just lovw the characters she has created!**

**I've been wanting to write a fantasy fanfiction for a while, where Edward was a different creature from an otherworldly place. I'm not sure if anyone would like it or be interested in more, but if you feel you would, then please review and let me now. This Edward will be a bit dark and possessive also.**

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**Deepest, Darkest in The Woods**

In the deepest heart of the wood's openings, I catch sight of my best friend, and the only person with whom I can truly be myself around without any judgement. Jacob Black.

I can feel the rigid set of my face muscles relaxing minutely, my spine and shoulders softening from their straight, defensive set. My pace quickens rapidly, my soft soled boots crunch against the rocky path as I climb up the hill towards our frequent meeting place on an early weekend morning. His head and neck peek out from a wild thicket of bushes, as he stands there, patiently waiting for me. One hand lifts to scratch the nape of his neck, as he squints down at me. His face softens into a pleased smile; all radiantly white, straight teeth. Jacob usually never smiles unless he's alone with me, it's an oddity about him that the townsfolk in Forks usually jibe about. Whenever we are around other people, I think he purposefully adapts into strong, silent mode to off-put people into double-crossing us.

He's always told me that since he has been the food-bearer to his four younger siblings for years, the protective, strong face he wears often is a necessary thing. It keeps people from crossing his family otherwise. We're both much the same, though; I think I'm the only person in the world he truly trusts, and can be his goofy, silly self around, sans judgement. We are both a relief to each other.

"Hey Duck-Feet," he calls down at me, halfway to meeting him at his resting place. My real name is actually Bella, but he has called me Duck-Feet ever since I can remember. It's a little private joke for me, because the first time we met, I lost my footing and tripped in front of him. Then after we hung out and got to know each other more, he realized me being Duck-Footed and uncoordinated was an actual permanent fault of mine, so it gradually became his official nickname for me. Before, it used to annoy me and make me feel embarrassed, but now I didn't mind so much. He never called me it out of spite, it was simply general playful and fond teasing from him.

Just as I reach him, the tip of my boot snags on a low branch, and I stumble. He catches me by the arm, just in time, and we both laugh.

"That nickname is still holding true then," he says, with a short laugh.

I punch him in the arm, not even bothering to muster any effort into making it a decent hit to wound him with. "What time did you get here this morning?" I ask.

"Bright and early, actually. I decided I needed to be alone anyway. Seth was being a pain." Seth is Jacob's youngest brother, of all the four brother's he has in his family. Seth is eight, his other brother Quil, is fourteen. Another brother, Jared, is sixteen. And the second oldest, the one Jacob fights the most with, is Sam, who is seventeen. Jacob and I are both eighteen this year.

I have no siblings, I am an only child, but Jacob is often like the brother I never had. And, much in the same way, I'm the sister he's never had.

Sometimes, when we were younger, we would lie to passing townsfolk and tattle that we were actually related, biological brother and sister. The people would always stare between the two us with sheer disbelief; Of course, we couldn't actually ever realistically pass as biological brother and sister. We hardly even looked related. Jacob is clear olive-skinned, short-cropped, straight black hair. The only similarity we do have, is the same color eyes. My hair is dark also, except its more light brown that the darkest shade Jake sports. My complexion is also pale white, rather than Jake's tan. But I'm just as devoted to his brother's as he is. Everytime I come around to visit, Seth will be first to demand excitedly that we wrestle on the carpet.

Though Jacob's my age, he already looks like a mature, grown man. When we first became friends, which took a while because we both had our defenses up, he looked much the same. Broad-shouldered, strong enough to carry almost anything. Except now, naturally with the end of puberty, his cheeks have grown out of their softness and are more sharp and defined, as well as his jaw. He even has a little patch of dark facial hair growing on his chin, while time hasn't changed me much. He's still far taller than me by inches, I'm still all gangly long legs, and duck-footed- hence the nickname.

"Oh. Hope I didn't leave you waiting too long, then. I had to wait until I knew for sure Mom and Dad were still asleep," I tell him. My mother, Renee, and father, Charlie, would have been thrown into a panicked strife had they ever found out what Jacob and I got up to.

For the townsfolk of Forks, we weren't permitted to go through the barbwire fence and into this particular area, it was there for a reason to protect the town. Many wild animals resided in the woods, ones that people based stories of. In one tale, which I was assuming was fabricated, a boy went missing. He was eighteen, and he sneaked in one late afternoon, only to never come home. The tales also went that his spirit still lives on in the woods, that whoever entered, would be haunted by the boy's tortured spirit. I didn't put much stock into it, though, and neither did Jacob.

It was also illegal, but Jake and I had learned really well with time how to do it without getting caught.

"No, it's cool. It didn't bother me, the waiting. I would wait days and days just to get the chance to spend time with you," he says, in such an offhand way that doesn't quite match the severity of what he is telling me. Recently, in the past year or so, Jacob has told me some pretty revealing things. Certain things about how he felt when around me, like how I felt like home to him, like when we weren't together how he grew restless and couldn't sit still at times.

I believed things between us were platonic. Everything between us felt strictly platonic to me. There hasn't ever been anything romantic between us, and I don't think I could ever see Jacob possibly in that way. Ever. But when Jacob says things like this to me, it has me almost second-guessing whether Jacob and I were on the same page in regards to our friendship.

"Oh, that's sweet," I say, pretending to sound touched. "What do you want to do today? We could go exploring further through the woods than we did last time?"

His face falls a bit, and I get the impression that maybe something in my response has dissatisfied him. But really, what did he expect? For me to declare the same sentiment, when he already knows how I feel the same way myself about our friendship surely? "Oh, yeah," he agrees flatly. "Sure, let's go further."

"Maybe we could go further in other ways, too," he says quietly, as we walk.

"What?" I ask. Maybe I've misunderstood him, heard something different from what he's actually said.

"We've been best friends for over ten years now. After all this time, surely you've picked up on the way I feel about you," he says.

I can't even ring myself to look at him. It feels wrong, the whole conversation we're having. I don't even know how to respond. Jacob ever saying this seems so unrealistic to me, so absurd.

"And I know you feel it, too. You have to," he adds confidently.

I have a few hunches into what he's talking about, of course. Maybe it was an inevitable thing? That if you hang out with someone for so long, you eventually start feeling more for them? But did I ever want more from Jacob? I didn't know whether I did or not. I didn't know whether I even could.

"As the closest of friend's, Jake," I say.

"I think I might feel more. I don't know how but... somehow it's changed. I see you differently now."

"Nothing has to change, Jake," I whisper back, irritated.

"It could, if you ever admitted to it," he snaps back. Then he huffs out an indignated breath. "If you ever tried to let it. You know what, forget it. Just forget I ever said anything."

"Trust me, I will," I retort, hardly caring for hurting his feelings. Because this was right. This was how it was meant to be for us, always. "And I won't ever. All I'll ever want from you, is a close friend. It'll never change."

He walks ahead of me. Just by the way he walks, I can sense the rage there. It swirls around us, coating the space between us thick with tension. I still can't believe he's brought this up. Where did it come from? When did it ever?

"Oh, please," he scoffs back at me. "You can't say that. Not everything's set in stone, Bella."

"But this is for me." I can sense an agurment brewing between us, which is odd. Jake and I never usually fought, but the fact we were fighting over this, of all things, was poposterous. A few meters ahead of us, I hear it. The constant, rushing flow of a river sliding over rocks. We've never been this far before. It's a new and exciting discovery. "Jake, can you hear that?" I ask, my voice unsteady with the depth of my excitement.

He turns back to look at me, his dark brown eyes still searing with anger from our ridiculous argument. But then his eyes meet mine, in mirrored excitement at a newly found discovery, and we are conspirators. "A river. Want to go fishing?"

"How can we? We don't have fishing rods on us," I point out stiffly.

"So? There are other ways, Bella."

Clenching my jaw, thoroughly annoyed with him, I push ahead of him, after the sound. We've well and truly lost the familiar path we've taken now. I start to worry, hoping we will be able to find our way back home. But then there's Jacob with me, at least. Two of us lost together in an unfamiliar bushy place is better than one. I find the source of the sound of gushing water before Jacob does. It's truly beautiful, a rocky streaming river cascading down a hillside. I kneel onto my knees at the bed of the river, and delve my hands underneath the surface of the stream. It's refreshingly cool against my fingers, and leaves them feeling clean of dirt. To the left of me, he comes slashing through the bushes. At first, I assumed it was Jacob, and I had my face set in a taunting sneer, _See? Here you go! I can find it on my own without your help first!_

Only it wasn't Jacob. I'm left feeling helpless, and stunned in shock, when a wild animal bounds through the bushes, it's black silky tail whipping back and forth. It's similar to the slinky, stealthiness of a leopard scampering on its paws, only it looks a mixture between a big wolf and a leopard. It's splotches of different colors on its rugged coat; Bronze spots, black spots. It's eyes, which dart to me next, are a solid green, with a hint of iridescent yellow slits in the pupils, reminiscent to the predatory eyes of an anaconda. A growl bursts and clatters through glistening, long white teeth at me through its muzzle, and in the next, a peculiar splattering sound explodes from the heart of it. Suddenly, its coat is splintering open, making way to fresh, pink human flesh covered in glossy wet animal entrails that stick to limbs.

Disoriented at what's happened to the animal before my very own eyes, I lurch back from the river, falling onto my back and into the bushes. Tucking my knees up to my chin, I stare forward, unable to remove my eyes. I wait for death, a quick and easy kill.

The bewildering half-animal, half-human creatures eyes bore into my own, and then I'm hyperventilating, I can't believe it, I can't believe it. His whole naked body is glistening as if he's just been dripping off in a batch of sticky, shiny dew. Black animal down sticks to his elbows, to his knuckles, to his chin, his knees.

And then I hear the scream.

It's Jacob. He's calling out to me frantically, yelling. He assumes I'm lost, and he's scared and desperate to find me. The human-animal creature stiffens at the sound, his shoulders hunched back, chin inclined. He gives out several loud whimpering noises. He almost sounds like a wounded dog to me. It twists at my heart, tugs at me.

"Hey," I croak out, softly as I can possibly muster. My voice isn't working right over the shock; My tongue feels too stiff, my throat too tight. "Hey, it's all right."

Just when I turn my head, about to shout back to Jacob so he knows my whereabouts and to come see, it happens.

I just have the time to start to shout Jacob's name, my voice sounding distinctively hoarse in fright over the discovery of the foreign creature, when black hair explodes through the creature's human chest, he is the strange animal again, and he's racing back through the bushes and out-of-sight, the tail slicing through the bushes.


End file.
